BETH ORTON - CENTRAL RESERVATION. DAY 4

BETH ORTON - CENTRAL RESERVATION

Thirteen years ago Beth Orton looked like the kind of chick you’d see at a music festival 10 years ago. Does that make sense? Orton epitomised folksy/nomadic/electronic...where kids who would once only listen to rock or techno met in the middle, got messed up watching the chemical brothers and then came down listening to her...

You cant fake her sound. She’s like an earthy mash up of joni mitchell, carol king and natalie merchant..a kid for the new kind of woodstock - Glastonbury. 

I became rather obsessed with her whole ‘thongs and homemade denim skirt’ look. I tried that a few times but didn’t succeed in carrying it off until 4 years ago...so I guess I missed the boat.  

My album is a copy and I cant remember exactly who gave it to me...although highly likely it was one of the two following freaks: 

Freak #1

A morbidly obese girl with the worlds most acidic tongue who I worked with in the worst of my million jobs. She drove a huge car which she parked as close to work as possible so she wouldn't have to walk and she tortured the dumber staff with her mean spirited jibes so naturally I was drawn to her...at lunch when I would be bolting out of that hideous cubicle filled land of fluorescent lighting, she would remain seated at her desk...eating the roll she bought at the petrol station on the way to work..sometimes I bought her fried rice from the bacteria invested bain marie’s downstairs for something different..anyway she was 5 years older than me and still lived at home...so she had more money for CD’s…

Freak #2

This dude was friends with Freak #1 and worked in another building and without wanting to sound like a conceited arsehole...he was obsessed with me..he would bring things to my work like flowers and teddy’s and stupid love related shit that asian teenagers fill the back windows of their cars with. I had no respect for this dude at all but, he was nice...I think he was my first ‘pity pal’..I couldn't get rid of him and he did whatever I wanted. It creeped me out. Weirdly he thought much of himself...it was as though he had never looked in the mirror as his high self opinion wasn’t warranted...he flicked his hair like he had a twitch and left his hands in his pockets like he was Danny Zucko from Grease. His breathing was heavy..he was a prime candidate for Type 2 Diabetes and heart disease...I pranked him constantly but he was so lamely in love with me that I couldn't really enjoy the thrill of the trick...his dad was a chemist so he tried to buy people and he would always talk about the time he ‘dropped acid’ like he was Hunter S Thompson...I didn't really get why someone who had a seemingly normal family was so unfortunate...he was always buying CD’s..

In Conclusion: 

I recall listening to this on the hour long train ride to work on my discman..yes that’s DISCMAN..I paid $190 and was always disappointed when the ant-jumping feature would fail. Listening to Central Reservation for me is like standing in the desert with a pocket full of money and nowhere to spend it...its warm and full of expectation and the lushness comes not from what’s around you but what you can make of it..